Review of Johnson's Computer Ethics

Colleges are racing to give courses in all sorts of ethical issues which are 1) not understood by the philosophers teaching it, 2) are not understood by the professionals in the field who are exposed to it and 3) are not fully developed as fields in and of themselves. One such field is computer ethics, and one such book is Deborah Johnson's Computer Ethics.

The book is not all that bad when one surveys the other books which do the same job. But as a field, computer ethics needs a lot of work.

The first question in the field, is wether it really is a field. Is computer ethics really an independent field of study, or is it, as most philosophers tend to think of it as plain old ethics with examples from computer science. I am personally inclined to believe that it really is an independent field, because it is capable of asking its own questions that are independent of standard ethics. However the Johnson is not really successful in convincing us that that is the case.

Johnson gives us these half-answers that about how the scope and nature of the medium really causes us to have new ethical questions. I am not convinced by her answers.

Here is a general rundown of the book. There is an introduction to the questions about whether there is a need for computer ethics, and discussions of ethics, computers and society. Chapter 2 addresses philosophical ethics which does a sloppy job on ethical relativism and an awful job with deontological theories. Next are chapters on professional ethics which will work on classes in business ethics, computer ethics, engineering ethics, and in a pinch will work for doctors and lawyers too. Chapters 4 and 8 (for some reason) address questions about the internet. Chapter 5 touched on privacy and 6 property rights. Both of these need more conceptual clarity and philosophical rigor. Short of that it would be nice to give students a way to deal with these questions. Neither is present. Chapter 7 addresses questions of accountability.

Much work needs to be done in this field. Johnson does a good job for a field that really is in its infancy. She produced a book that does offer a lot of stuff to think about. Unfortunately her answers are somewhat unfinished, but that is more the fault of the field, than Johnson's.